As I drove down my driveway Sunday afternoon, a jackrabbit was sitting at the edge of the gravel eating grass. I didn’t have my camera with me, but I stopped and waited awhile for it to hop along. When it didn’t, I restarted my car and approached the rabbit slowly. The rabbit hopped away from the driveway 10 feet or so and watched me drive past.

Twenty minutes later when I returned, there were two jackrabbits beside the driveway, so I parked and walked up through a field to the cabin and got my camera. By the time I returned to my car, one rabbit had disappeared, but this one had stuck around.

I got back in my car and again drove toward the rabbit very slowly. Once I got close enough to snap a photo, I stopped, leaned out the car window, and shot several. Then I started slowly driving toward it again.

When I had almost reached the jackrabbit, it hopped behind a coyote bush, and I watched to see it if would continue on across the field. It didn’t. And as I drove past the bush, I spotted the rabbit hunkered down only a few feet from my car. Again I stopped and shot some pictures before driving on.

Unfortunately for the rabbits, this bobcat has taken to hunting around Mitchell cabin. I’ve seen it catch a gopher or two, but so far there’s been no evidence of its catching a jackrabbit.

The bobcat casually walks across Mitchell cabin’s parking area between my car and the barrier we call “Woodhenge.” (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Birds, of course, are not the only creatures with pecking orders. Here a raccoon at the top of the pecking order grabs a slice of bread off my kitchen floor Sunday night while a subordinate raccoon (barely visible at left) waits its turn.

Once the dominant raccoon has taken a slice, the subordinate raccoon reaches inside for its own bread.

It was raining cats and dogs last week, so when the sky finally cleared, these horses in a pasture next to Mitchell cabin lay down for a sunbath. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

As for the origin of the phrase “raining cats and dogs,” it’s nothing like the malarkey that has been circulating on the Internet for the past 15 years. Repeatedly forwarded emails claim the phrase dates back to the thatch roofs on the huts of medieval peasants. The thick straw supposedly was the only place for little animals to get warm, so all the pets — dogs, cats and other small animals — lived in the roof. When it rained, the roof would become slippery and the animals would sometimes slip off. This is said to account for the saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

The phrase does indeed date to the Middle Ages, the venerable Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins agrees, but only because of the superstition of an era when people believed in witches, ghosts and goblins. “The cat was thought by sailors to have a lot to do with storms, and the witches that were believed to ride in the storms were often pictured as black cats,” the dictionary explains.

“Dogs and wolves were symbols of the winds, and the Norse storm god Odin was frequently shown surrounded by dogs and wolves. So when a particularly violent rainstorm came along, people would say it was ‘raining cats and dogs’ — with cats symbolizing the rain and the dogs representing the wind and storm.”

In light of that, I’d say West Marin could use a few more cats this spring — but no more dogs.

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The Light on the Coast

Tomales Regional History Center has just published The Light on the Coast: 65 Years of News Big and Small as Reported in The Point Reyes Light. The book, which I wrote with Jacoba Charles, is the post-World War II history of West Marin's lively little towns and their Pulitzer Prize-winning weekly newspaper. Click here to read about it.

David V. Mitchell

Welcome to the blog of David Mitchell, editor & publisher emeritus of The Point Reyes Light. In 1979, The Light won the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service for an exposé largely written by him of the increasingly violent Synanon cult. Mitchell retired in November 2005 after 35 years of newspapering, 27 of those at The Light.

During his newspaper career, he also worked for the old San Francisco Examiner, Sonora’s Daily Union Democrat in the Sierra Nevada, and Council Bluff’s daily newspaper, The Nonpareil. In addition, he edited the weekly Sebastopol (California) Times. Mitchell holds a master’s degree in Communications and a bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford University. He was born on Nov. 23, 1943, and lives in Point Reyes Station on the rural coast north of San Francisco.

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